cannabisnews.com: Ky. Pot Growers Lacing Va. Lands





Ky. Pot Growers Lacing Va. Lands
Posted by FoM on September 25, 2000 at 08:33:05 PT
By Rex Bowman, Times-Dispatch Staff Writer 
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
Kentucky marijuana growers, whose billion-dollar business is under intense assault by the U.S. government, are pushing east into Virginia to avoid federal detection, sowing abandoned strip mines and national forest land with pot, according to drug authorities in Southwest Virginia.Since 1998, the state line between Kentucky and Virginia has become a crisscross of trails created by all-terrain vehicles used by growers to get to their marijuana plots and back to Kentucky, said Kevin Yates, a Dickenson County deputy. Dickenson borders Pike County, Ky.
"We've seen a lot of four-wheeler trails going across Pine Mountain, which separates Dickenson from Pike, and informants have even seen transactions on the trails," said Yates. "Right now, there's not much we can do. For the time being, the issue is manpower."Kentucky growers began planting more marijuana in Virginia two years ago after the federal government declared eastern Kentucky the center of the Appalachian "marijuana belt," said Richard Stallard, coordinator of a drug task force that operates in Dickenson, Wise, Scott and Lee - Virginia's four westernmost counties. The increased federal attention led to a crackdown on the Bluegrass State's illegal marijuana industry."I understand what the growers are thinking," Stallard said. "If I'm putting a lot of pressure on somebody here, they're going to go somewhere else where they think they can do it."The ATV trails running across Black Mountain between Virginia and Kentucky are now too many to count, Stallard said. A field of almost 4,000 marijuana plants found in Wise last month - the biggest find there in years - was probably a joint operation of Kentucky and Virginia growers, he said. The field was near the Kentucky state line.Virginia's marijuana industry, concentrated in the southwest corner of the state, has been a long-standing problem for authorities, and pot is believed to be the state's largest cash crop, surpassing even tobacco. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, using federal statistics, estimates that the annual wholesale value of Virginia marijuana is nearly $200 million. Virginia agriculture officials reported that wholesale tobacco sales in 1999 topped $160 million.But Virginia's marijuana crop pales in comparison with what's grown in eastern Kentucky, where high unemployment and mountainous isolation make growing pot attractive. Officials estimate Kentucky growers make about $1.37 billion a year. Some put the crop value at $3.9 billion. (The wild divergence in estimates is partly due to the differing yield of a single plant. Some plants yield $1,000 worth of pot, some yield $2,000 or more.)The amount of marijuana grown in Appalachia has caught the attention of the federal government, which in April 1998 designated 65 counties in West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. The designation allowed the government to pump $6 million a year into eradication efforts. The result: nearly 2,000 arrests and the destruction of more than 486,000 pot plants in 5,703 plots in 1998 and 1999, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy."They work the eradication efforts really, really hard in Kentucky," Stallard said. "They use advance tactics and Blackhawk helicopters. They rappel into an area, cut down the plants, then haul them up on a hoist line."Those kinds of tactics make Kentucky growers' eastern migration understandable, said Stan Kennedy, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent based in Roanoke. "They're looking for different areas where they don't think the Virginia authorities are looking."Stallard and Yates said it's difficult to catch growers in the mountains of Virginia. When authorities find a marijuana patch, they like to stake it out for a few days to see if the growers show up. But limited manpower makes lengthy stakeouts impractical.Stallard said he hopes to involve local game commissions in future eradication programs in Virginia. Yates, meanwhile, said Dickenson soon will have four more deputies available to help stop the influx of Kentucky growers."Next year," Yates said, "we'll be swinging a bigger bat."Contact Rex Bowman at (540) 344-3612 or rbowman timesdispatch.comSource: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)Author: Rex Bowman Published: September 25, 2000© 2000, Richmond Newspapers Inc. Contact: letters timesdispatch.comAddress: P.O. Box 85333, Richmond, VA 23293Fax: (804) 775-8072Website: http://www.timesdispatch.com/Feedback: http://www.gatewayva.com/feedback/totheeditor.shtmlRelated Articles:Discovery of Marijuana Fields Hints at Return http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6678.shtmlGreen Grass Of Homehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/2/thread2400.shtmlGoing To Pot: Weed Making Comebackhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread2213.shtml 
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Comment #2 posted by Frank on September 25, 2000 at 18:30:58 PT
Kill Them to Save Them
"We've seen a lot of four-wheeler trails going across Pine Mountain, which separates Dickenson from Pike, and informants have even seen transactions on the trails," said Yates. "Right now, there's not much we can do. For the time being, the issue is manpower."Stallard and Yates said it's difficult to catch growers in the mountains of Virginia. When authorities find a marijuana patch, they like to stake it out for a few days to see if the growers show up. But limited manpower makes lengthy stakeouts impractical.Below sums up the mentality of the police in this matter:If we only had more manpower we could get even more poor people from Appalachia in prison. Why not take the 1.7 billion dollars that are ear marked for Columbia and spend it in Appalachia. With the Black Hawk technology of look down and fire down we could kill the mountain people off in a month long campaign. The “Drug Czar” would invite his killers (DEA) to the White House Rose Garden for an award’s ceremony. We have eliminated teenage pot smoking in Appalachia – they’re all dead; thank you DEA. The “Drug Czar” would be so proud. He would most likely award himself another phony campaign metal.Better to kill poor people then have them smoking and growing marijuana.  
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Comment #1 posted by Washington on September 25, 2000 at 10:09:13 PT
Yes, Virginia
Make the most of the Indian Hemp Seed and sow it everywhere. -- George Washington 
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